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| Sotomeier - Supreme Court rules for white firefighters - |
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gwen
 Posted:
Mon Jun 29, 2009 11:34 am |
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Sotomeier - Supreme Court rules for white firefighters
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.
New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.
The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when there is no evidence it was intentional.
"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."
Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg's dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday.
Kennedy's opinion made only passing reference to the work of Sotomayor and the other two judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who upheld a lower court ruling in favor of New Haven.
But the appellate judges have been criticized for producing a cursory opinion that failed to deal with "indisputably complex and far from well-settled" questions, in the words of another appeals court judge, Sotomayor mentor Jose Cabranes.
"This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal," Cabranes said, in a dissent from the full 2nd Circuit's decision not to hear the case.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Sotomayor should not be criticized for the unsigned appeals court decision, which he asserted she did not write. "Judge Sotomayor and the lower court panel did what judges are supposed to do, they followed precedent," said the Vermont Democrat who will preside over Sotomayor's confirmation hearings next month.
Leahy also called the high court decision "cramped" and wrong.
In New Haven, Nancy Ricci, whose son, Frank, was the lead plaintiff on the lawsuit, carried a large cake decorated with red, white and blue frosting into the law office where the firefighters were celebrating their victory.
Ricci's father, Jim Ricci said the ruling is a victory for firefighters across the country. "Now we're going to get the best managers as far as firefighters go. That's really important," Ricci said.
Monday's decision has its origins in New Haven's need to fill vacancies for lieutenants and captains in its fire department. It hired an outside firm to design a test, which was given to 77 candidates for lieutenant and 41 candidates for captain.
Fifty six firefighters passed the exams, including 41 whites, 22 blacks and 18 Hispanics. But of those, only 17 whites and two Hispanics could expect promotion.
The city eventually decided not to use the exam to determine promotions. It said it acted because it might have been vulnerable to claims that the exam had a "disparate impact" on minorities in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The white firefighters said the decision violated the same law's prohibition on intentional discrimination.
Kennedy said an employer needs a "strong basis in evidence" to believe it will be held liable in a disparate impact lawsuit. New Haven had no such evidence, he said.
The city declined to validate the test after it was given, a step that could have identified flaws or determined that there were no serious problems with it. In addition, city officials could not say what was wrong with the test, other than the racially skewed results.
"The city could be liable for disparate-impact discrimination only if the examinations were not job related" or the city failed to use a less discriminatory alternative, Kennedy said. "We conclude that there is no strong basis in evidence to establish that the test was deficient in either of these respects."
But Ginsburg said the court should have assessed "the starkly disparate results" of the exams against the backdrop of historical and ongoing inequality in the New Haven fire department. As of 2003, she said, only one of the city's 21 fire captains was African-American.
Until this decision, Ginsburg said, the civil rights law's prohibitions on intentional discrimination and disparate impact were complementary, both aimed at ending workplace discrimination.
"Today's decision sets these paired directives at odds," she said.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090629/D994DMR81.html
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AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 22436
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| petals
Posted:
Mon Jun 29, 2009 4:54 pm |
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People keep talking about this case as if Sotomayor wrote it herself - she did not. She joined the majority in upholding the existing legal precedent (exactly what a Judge is supposed to do). Actually, her ruling was the opposite of judicial activism. But she is an Obama appointee which means that she will be opposed by a certain element of loud-mouthed zealots, no matter what she brings to the table. (Gwen, I dont mean you - I know from reading your posts that you are quite enlightened on the subject.)
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 646
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| gwen
Posted:
Sun Jul 05, 2009 7:07 pm |
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No problem, petals. 
I wasn't real sure where to put this...
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AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 22436
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| DiamondDot
Posted:
Mon Jul 06, 2009 4:11 pm |
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I don't understand how a safety test could be racial or sexist. The answers are absolute.
When I worked at the chemical plant, it didn't matter if you were male/female, black/white or a kangaroo. The rules for safety were the same. Those chemicals and emergency situations did not care who or what you were.
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Double D
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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Location: Surfin' the Rhythms of the Universe
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| dithers
Posted:
Mon Jul 06, 2009 4:43 pm |
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| DiamondDot wrote: | I don't understand how a safety test could be racial or sexist. The answers are absolute.
When I worked at the chemical plant, it didn't matter if you were male/female, black/white or a kangaroo. The rules for safety were the same. Those chemicals and emergency situations did not care who or what you were. |
Right on DD. Exactamundo. It's a phony baloney smokescreen (pardon the unintended pun) tailormade for the racial quota crowd.
We always hear how certain tests are biased against one group or another - but I've never seen one.
I've been trying to find this particular test. Has anyone seen it? It would be interesting to see if there's anything that appears to be slanted or biased against one group or another. The fact that the test hasn't been blasted all over the news reinforces my belief that this is a phony-baloney smokescreen.
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Deactivated by User's request
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
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| apodixis
Posted:
Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:37 pm |
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The test was reportedly produced by a professional organization called Industrial Organizational Solutions, Inc ( I/O Solutions ), which specializes in the design of Police/firefighter/paramedic employment examinations:
http://www.iosolutions.org/
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Joined: 06 Aug 2006
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Location: State of Jefferson, Ecotopia
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| dithers
Posted:
Mon Jul 06, 2009 6:41 pm |
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| apodixis wrote: | The test was reportedly produced by a professional organization called Industrial Organizational Solutions, Inc ( I/O Solutions ), which specializes in the design of Police/firefighter/paramedic employment examinations:
http://www.iosolutions.org/ |
I read a blog a week or two ago - written by a black person - who was upset that one of the things the folks who were against this test were touting was that it relied on a lot of memorization (I don't know if that's true). They were of the thought that blacks can't memorize, I guess. But that was what had this blogger's hackles up - the insinuation that blacks can't memorize or whatever. Can't say as I blame him. What a crock.
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| K Hemingway
Posted:
Tue Jul 14, 2009 5:08 pm |
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I'd personally like to see the test and ask how much weight this test carried in the employment decision. While a test vendor’s documentation supporting the validity of a test may be helpful, the employer is still responsible for ensuring that its tests are valid under UGESP. (Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures)
I've worked with a lot of these tests, and sat on a committee to choose a valid screening test that didn't demonstrate any disparate impact on any group. We tested about 20 of them and the ones who do demonstrate a pattern of disparate impact can't be spotted just by reading the questions. Many of them DID show a pattern of disparate impact, about 60 percent of them.
Here's what the city did wrong, IMO. If a selection procedure screens out a protected group, the employer should determine whether there is an equally effective alternative selection procedure that has less adverse impact and, if so, adopt the alternative procedure.
Instead, the city realized something was wrong with the test, and just threw it out, like it never happened. Not smart. They should have determined whether another test would also predict job performance but not disproportionately exclude the protected group.
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| apodixis
Posted:
Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:02 pm |
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| K Hemingway wrote: | I'd personally like to see the test and ask how much weight this test carried in the employment decision. While a test vendor’s documentation supporting the validity of a test may be helpful, the employer is still responsible for ensuring that its tests are valid under UGESP. (Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures)
I've worked with a lot of these tests, and sat on a committee to choose a valid screening test that didn't demonstrate any disparate impact on any group. We tested about 20 of them and the ones who do demonstrate a pattern of disparate impact can't be spotted just by reading the questions. Many of them DID show a pattern of disparate impact, about 60 percent of them.
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Interesting. Have you got a link to, or can you give some examples of objective vs. culturally partial ways of asking technical questions ?
Say for questions such as for an EMT on how to deal with shock; Or for a firefighter on how do recognize the potential for a flashover ?
Those were the type of questions that would likely have been asked in the Ricci case.
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Location: State of Jefferson, Ecotopia
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| K Hemingway
Posted:
Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:17 pm |
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| apodixis wrote: |
Interesting. Have you got a link to, or can you give some examples of objective vs. culturally partial ways of asking technical questions ?
Say for questions such as for an EMT on how to deal with shock; Or for a firefighter on how do recognize the potential for a flashover ?
Those were the type of questions that would likely have been asked in the Ricci case. |
The psychological science behind these tests isn't obvious. I couldn't tell they would show a pattern of disparate treatment at all just by reading the questions. I couldn't tell until I tested them, and the results repeatedly excluded a protected group.
Most of them are multiple choice questions.
I like valid tools as PART of the selection or succession process...IF THEY don't exclude protected groups.
I also did a study of 2 seperate work groups doing the same work, one group was chosen with the test we finally chose, testing as PART of the selection process NOT THE SOLE factor, and another group without testing as part of the selection process. I then tracked sales, safety, shrinkage, turnover and profits for 6 months...and put it in an excel chart, the results were striking.
Bottom line IMO, they can be valuable...but you better know what your doing.
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| K Hemingway
Posted:
Tue Jul 14, 2009 7:24 pm |
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| apodixis wrote: |
Interesting. Have you got a link to, or can you give some examples of objective vs. culturally partial ways of asking technical questions ?
Say for questions such as for an EMT on how to deal with shock; Or for a firefighter on how do recognize the potential for a flashover ?
Those were the type of questions that would likely have been asked in the Ricci case. |
There was no law broken with the giving the tests in Ricci. The law was broken when they realized a problem with the test and threw them away...because they MADE A DECISION that if they went with the tests results, they'd likely get sued. THAT decision was made on the basis of race. THAT was the violation of law.
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| K Hemingway
Posted:
Wed Jul 22, 2009 7:43 pm |
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Judge rules FDNY exams discriminated against minorities
Hmmmm....was New Haven right after all?
Judge rules FDNY exams discriminated against minorities
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the New York City Fire Department used recruitment exams that discriminated against African-American and Hispanic applicants.
Judge finds written firefighter tests had "discriminatory effects" on minority candidates.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis found that the written tests had "discriminatory effects and little relationship to the job of a firefighter." Garaufis also concluded that the "examinations unfairly excluded hundreds of qualified people of color from the opportunity to serve as New York City firefighters," thus, he said, constituting employment discrimination.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against the city of New York, with the suit challenging whether the city's written fire-department exams from 1999 to 2007 disadvantaged would-be African-American and Hispanic firefighters.
The Vulcan Society, an organization that represents African-American firefighters, also was listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit. After the society had complained about the entry-level firefighter tests and also filed suit, the fire department revised the written test early in 2007.
The New York City Fire Department is the largest fire department in the United States, employing about 11,000 firefighters. Of those, 3 percent are black and 4.5 percent are Hispanic.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/22/firefighter.discrimination/
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